title: Fusion of multinuclear magnetic resonance images of knee for the assessment of articular cartilage.
abstract: The onset of osteoarthritis (OA), a most common knee joint disease, can be characterized by the degeneration of articular cartilage (AC). Degenerative changes in AC have been assessed by the morphological and physiological measurements using non-invasive modality such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to obtain MRI images of the knee. However, visualization and quantification of AC from MR images is difficult due to the low visibility contrast of AC compared to surrounding tissues, low and varying signal intensities in cartilage region and variable intensities in different slices of single dataset. In this work, we present a method to fuse multinuclear ((23)Na and (1)H) MR images acquired in the same plane without changing the position of the human knee as well as the Radio Frequency (RF) coil. This work is performed towards our hypothesis that fusion of sodium and proton images will provide an enhanced image that can be used for an accurate assessment of cartilage morphology. Our result shows that merging of sodium knee MR image with proton knee MR image resulting in enhanced contrast information in the cartilage region and resolves low visibility and varying intensities issue with 2D/3D proton MR. We conclude that the proposed method can further be utilized for the accurate assessment of cartilage morphology.
authors.forename: Ahmad Fadzil M
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Hani
authors.forename: Dileep
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Aamir S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Malik
authors.forename: Ruslan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Razak
authors.forename: Azman
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kiflie
mesh_terms: D002358:Cartilage, Articular / Q000473:pathology*; D003287:Contrast Media; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007717:Knee / Q000473:pathology*; D007719:Knee Joint / Q000473:pathology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D020370:Osteoarthritis, Knee / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology*; D011522:Protons; D011846:Radio Waves; D012171:Retinal Vessels / Q000473:pathology; D012964:Sodium / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media; D011522:Protons; D012964:Sodium